About Dr. Darren Sledjeski

Darren, a microbiologist, oversees grants in the areas of transcription mechanisms and symbiotic relationships and community ecology. His background includes prior NIH experience as a postdoctoral researcher, scientific initiatives manager and scientific review officer.

We’re recruiting for a program director (also known as a health scientist administrator or program officer) to manage research grant, fellowship, training and other types of awards focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying inheritance, gene expression and development. The position is in our Division of Genetics and Developmental Biology, and it involves working collaboratively with other program directors in the division to support outstanding science in these fields.

Candidates should have expertise in the use of state-of-the-art molecular genetics and/or genomics-based approaches to gain a mechanistic understanding of one or more of these, or related, areas: cell growth and differentiation, signaling pathway dynamics, DNA and RNA replication, DNA recombination and repair, transcription, the function of coding and noncoding RNA, RNA processing and protein synthesis. Familiarity with NIH extramural funding as an applicant, reviewer or NIH scientific administrator is a plus, and outstanding written and oral communication skills are essential.

While it is well recognized that an individual’s microbiome has a substantial influence on health, fundamental knowledge gaps remain regarding host-microbial interactions, especially those involving the effects of probiotic and prebiotic products. To stimulate research in this area, NIGMS is participating with a number of other NIH institutes and centers in a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA), Advancing Mechanistic Probiotic/Prebiotic and Human Microbiome Research (R01).

We are looking for biochemists, chemists, bioengineers, systems biologists and others to define biochemical pathways, small molecules and biologics in host-microbial interactions. We are particularly interested in applications from interdisciplinary teams that propose to provide a functional and mechanistic picture of host-microbial ecosystems. This includes an understanding of host-probiotic-microbial interactions and the effect of exogenous molecules such as prebiotics on these interactions. We also encourage the development of computational models, tools and technologies that enable the prediction, identification, quantification and characterization of host-microbial dynamics as well as the development of tractable host-microbial systems.

The basic biomedical research NIGMS supports is essential for the groundbreaking advances that enhance human health, but drawing a connection between an NIGMS-funded research project and a specific medical advance can be difficult. First, it can be decades between the study of a scientific question and the application of the resulting knowledge to improving human health. Second, in most cases, it’s not a single project or experiment that leads to a “eureka moment” with tangible benefits, but rather the combination of many projects. Third, the projects may be supported by different funding sources (various NIH institutes, other federal agencies, private organizations and foundations), and these sources often change during the decades of development. What started as an NIGMS project may later get funded by an NIH institute whose mission is disease-specific, followed by private funding as the advance becomes commercialized.

We’re always looking for new ways to identify these connections, and we think you can help. We’re soliciting stories that make a clear association between NIGMS-funded research and improvements in health, well-being or other tangible benefits to the public and/or economy. We’re also interested in applications in medicine, industry, technology or elsewhere that have their roots in NIGMS-funded research projects. We especially encourage our long-time grantees to share their stories of discovery.

We’re not looking for “Nobel Prize”-type stories or scientific breakthroughs that might in the future lead to improvements in the human condition. Rather, we want complete stories that can trace current treatments, therapeutics or diagnostics back to knowledge or insights gained from one or more NIGMS-funded projects. These examples will augment our own staff’s efforts to identify such stories and help us further fill out the historical context of breakthroughs in basic research and their impacts.

We’re using the Challenge.gov mechanism for this purpose, which enables us to give monetary awards of $500 to winning entries. We’ll also post the winning stories on our Web site. Submissions are due by October 20, 2014, and we look forward to seeing what you send in!